


Bites and Broken Skin

by agentx13 (rebelle_elle)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Alpha Brock Rumlow, Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha Steve Rogers, Beta Sharon Carter, Cannibalism, Dark, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, M/M, PTSD, alpha/beta/omega, every warning under the sun, sharon carter appreciation month, triggers abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-24 15:54:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelle_elle/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an a/b/o alternative universe, SHIELD falls. Its surviving agents are given to the Hydra victors.</p><p>And then the true fight for survival begins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It doesn’t take long for the overcrowded cells to reek of sewage and sickness, and she loses track of how much time passes after she’s become accustomed to the smell. There are no windows, only cement walls and harsh halogen lights overhead, bullet-resistant glass separating them from their Hydra guards. Time is passed by listening to omegas lose control of themselves and go into heat. The guards either drag them away or “relieve” them there in the cells.

There are no Alphas here. Only betas and omegas. The omegas take up the majority of the space; betas are outnumbered nearly 12 to 1 and are left mostly to themselves at the end of the hall. They only interact with their keepers when the guards bring them food or take one of them away. No one ever knows where anyone is taken.

One day, they take her.

* * *

The Skull is back. She doesn’t know how. She’s been kept in the cell downstairs ever since the Helicarriers were sent up and Hydra had rounded up SHIELD survivors. No one explains his return.

The room is small, designed like a city council chamber. No one she recognizes is in the scattered audience. She can see Pierce sitting in one of the councillor seats beside the Skull, and she glares at him as if she could kill him if she just glares hard enough.

Rumlow is there, too, smirking at her. Her arm still itches from where he’d sliced it. She’d fixed it as best she could in the cells, before she had accepted that there was no rescue coming. She wants to kill him.

He turns his head, directing her attention elsewhere. She flicks her eyes that way, unwilling to take her attention off of one of Hydra’s primary enforcers, but he loses her attention nonetheless when she sees Steve Rogers in one of the seats behind the Skull, beaten and bloody and a thick and bloody collar around his neck. There’s a man beside him, and if she hadn’t known Bucky Barnes was dead, she would swear it was him. He doesn’t look as bloodied as Rogers, but there’s blood trickling from the collar around his neck.

“Stand up so this one can get a look at you, too, Rogers.” Rumlow’s voice is insufferably smug.

Rogers glances at the Skull, then his eyes settle on her, and she oddly wonders what he must make of her sullied clothes that she’s been wearing for weeks, her matted hair and the sickening scent that she knows is following her like a cloud. He stands, and she sees that his hands are in restraints. Not normal restraints. Ones that contain his forearms and hands and reach above his elbow. She doesn’t have to be told that they were made specially for him.

The Skull eyes him with distaste. “You follow no one’s orders but mine, charlatan. _Soldier._ ” The man next to Rogers stands and kicks Rogers in the knees, and she tries not to flinch as Rogers falls to the floor. The Soldier calmly sits.

“You posed a challenge.” The Skull studies her with disinterest, looking down at her over the emptiness where his nose should be. “I have been gifting people who were against us to my loyal followers.” Why not just kill them, she wonders. But she keeps her lips pressed together. “And you, as the great-niece and only surviving relative of Margaret Carter, founder of SHIELD, are valuable even though you are a beta.”

Rogers lifts his head and looks at her anew, looks almost panicked. She ignores him. He’d known her only as Kate or Agent 13. Her last name changes nothing for her; it should change nothing for him. 

“Pierce put in a claim for you, as did some others, and with your pedigree, I would not be against gifting you to him. But this morning I gave him a more valuable piece. An Avenger.” The Skull’s lips curled. “What Romanova lacks in pedigree, she makes up for in reputation.”

She fervently hopes Natasha murders the prick.

“And thus your claim was open again, to several, it must be said, who overshot themselves. As a Carter, as someone of pedigree, you are to be matched with someone closer to me, even though that so-called prestigious enemy was a woman. And so, I have chosen. Rumlow.”

Rumlow’s grin turns predatory, and she fights a shudder. Rumlow is strong, physically capable, and a sadist. Escaping him, killing him, will not be easy.

“He assures me the two of you have a history and that with him, you will be kept alive until I see fit otherwise. Go.”

She lifts an eyebrow, though her hands are shaking. She is outmatched, outnumbered. She has had too little food, too little sleep. But she is also a Carter, and she does not follow the Red Skull’s bidding. “Make me, you insufferable little prick.” Her voice trembles at first, gains strength as she continues. She has never been witty, but she has a knack for pissing people off.

The room goes still. The Skull glares at her, then calms. “Bravado. The last mewling of a stubborn child.”

“Easy for you to say when you can’t fight on equal ground, you piece of shit coward. You’ve got to lock Cap up like that, can’t even kick him yourself. You’ve got to use sneak attacks and starvation to make your enemies weaker. Seems to me like you know you’re going to get your ass kicked if you ever really take us on.” She works up what little spit she has. It doesn’t go far, lands two, maybe three feet in front of her, but it gets the point across.

She sees Rumlow approach out of the corner of her eye, and she doesn’t have time to get her guard up before the world goes dark.

* * *

When she wakes, he’s on top of her, already knotting inside her. She doesn’t know where they are, has to guess how they got here. He feels her start to move and presses his fingers hard against the sore spot on her temple; stars dance in her eyes, and she can’t suppress a whimper.

“I told the Skull I’d break you.” His tone is gruff. There’s an underlying joy to it. He won’t stop thrusting. “I always wanted to break a beta.”

“I’ll fucking kill you.” Her voice shakes.

“Wouldn’t be any fun breaking you if you didn’t try. Nobody’s stopping you.”

She realizes he’s right, that her hands are untied, and she tries to fight him off. But he has the advantage; he’s already inside her, and her struggling just makes him knot faster. 

He laughs and sets his hands on either side of her head. They only touch where their bodies meet. “Go on. Try to get away. If you can, I’ll let you go.”

She tries, tries to push him away, tries to pull herself away, but the knot is too big and it hurts too much and tears slip from her eyes.

He licks the salt from her face, steels himself against her shoulders, and pulls his hips back as if trying to pull out. It makes her gasp with pain, and he chuckles.

“Get used to it, Carter. I like my women to hurt. Know their place. Look on the bright side. Learn to be a good bitch for me, and I’ll make sure you like it some of the time.”

He spills inside her, and it’s the first time anyone has ever knotted in her, the first time anyone has made her feel so sickeningly and disgustingly full. The first time anyone she’s slept with has cared so little about her, reveled in her pain. The first time she feels as if she’s dying from the inside.

When he’s done, he bites her neck, and even after he pulls out, she still feels full. She tells herself that feeling used and horrible afterward are natural, that it isn’t her fault, but it doesn’t make the feelings go away. She lies there, breathless and numb, and he rolls off of her.

“Half an hour and I’ll be good for round two.” He looks down at her, studies every inch of her skin as if weighing her worth, and she feels violated all over again.

It’s the first time. She isn’t stupid enough to think it will be the last.

* * *

She doesn’t see anyone else for weeks. Rumlow brings her food, most of it in bottles or bags and listing the health benefits of whatever liquid is inside. She’s still hungry after she consumes each one, and he makes her brush her teeth afterwards each time. It’s one of the few orders she wouldn’t mind if it weren’t an order.

Rumlow is high-up enough that he has his own bathroom attached to the room. He is proud as he tells her that he could keep her in the room until she died and she would never see another living soul. He grins again and tells her that when the Skull decides to kill Rogers, he’ll show her Rogers’ head.

She suspects he does it to get a rise out of her, and she obliges. She knows he likes when she fights him, that it will only end with her pinned to the floor or against a wall as he knots inside her, but it’s more satisfying than lying there motionless as he fucks her. Not that that doesn’t happen, too. He doesn’t care if she’s ready for it, doesn’t care if she’s asleep, doesn’t care if she’s in pain. He has access to her, so that’s what he does. They sleep in the same bed - unwillingly, of course, and as such she sleeps with her hands and ankles tied so she can’t try and kill him while he sleeps - and in the morning, if the nightmares haven’t woken her, she wakes to him shoving himself into her. She knows he gets a break during the day because he comes in and, without preamble, climbs on top of her, forces himself into her fast and hard as if trying to tear her in two while glancing at his watch; sometimes he tells her that he’ll see her again later, sometimes he doesn’t even say that much. When he’s done for the day, it’s much the same, only for hours on end. 

He has a TV in the room, and he watches mind-numbing sitcoms or the news of Hydra’s glorious takeover.

She never thought a laugh track would make her want to kill herself.

“I like when you fight back,” he tells her during a repeat of Big Bang Theory. He’s on top of her, moving himself into position, and she tries to calm her beating heart. “Most days, it’s the only exercise you get.” And he laughs as if it’s the funniest thing anyone has ever said.

* * *

In a weird way, she almost gets accustomed to it. He fucks, he knots, she fights back, she takes it. She knows that he takes all the weapons with him when he goes, that there are multiple locks on the other side of the door, along with an alarm. She knows the walls are too thick to contact anyone else, too thick for anyone to hear her scream. She accepts that she’s in a prison where she is tortured multiple times a day.

She doesn’t accept that she has to stay here. Doesn’t accept that she’ll die here.

But then things change. He hits her for breaking rules he’s never told her about, stupid shit like, “You get into the tub before me, not after,” and “You make the bed whenever we’re not in it.” He doesn’t always stop hitting her after one punch, either. She is expected to keep his spartan living quarters clean, apparently, and he breaks the news to her after he gets home from work one day. The place is a mess - it’s _his_ mess, after all, not like she owns anything here - and he only gives her time to look at it, to verify that his shoes have been left on the floor instead of wherever they’re supposed to go, before hitting her again and again. In the end, he has to call someone to the room because there’s so much blood and she’s going in and out of consciousness.

A quiet man with round spectacles sees to Rumlow’s knuckles first, and she almost cries because she thinks for the first time that she really might be dying, and this isn’t how she wants to die, and then the kind-voiced weasel of a man tends to her wounds and tells her that she shouldn’t make her Alpha so angry, that it’s her duty to make him happy.

The man declares that she isn’t allowed to do anything strenuous, that there shouldn’t be pressure on her ribs. He talks to Rumlow about giving her pills several times a day and taking care of her wounds, and Rumlow pays close attention. It occurs to her that he almost seems afraid. And then she remembers - he’d promised the Skull to keep her alive. 

She can’t even defy him by surviving. He won’t let her die until the Skull orders it.

The “incident,” as he refers to it, changes things again, and whenever she fights him, he wrenches her around and bends her over the bed, fucking her from behind, his anger and fear at nearly killing her making him knot faster. Once, she hears him laugh, and before she has time to panic, his voice is in her ear, ordering her to stay still or things are going to hurt even worse.

He puts something cold and jelly-like along her ass, and her mind grinds to a halt. Her breath catches, and she stiffens, tries to stand again, to get away from the bed, but he’s there, his cock against her asshole, and she hears him laugh again. “That’s it, Carter. Fight me. It’ll only make it hurt more.” He shoves her head down against the mattress, and then he’s pushing in, and there’s nothing she can do but shout in pain and try not to cry.

It seems to go on for an eternity. She hadn’t thought the knot could be worse. He growls in her ear about how tight she is, how he should have done this ages ago. He wonders aloud if this is what the Schmidt does to Rogers to keep him in line, or if maybe Schmidt has the Soldier do it, or maybe they take turns or double-up, or maybe when Rogers goes in heat, Schmidt ignores Rogers entirely and makes him suffer through it. Maybe Schmidt plans to use Rogers’ seeds for super-soldiered Hydra brats. She ignores him as best she can, tries to focus on her breathing, keeping her gaze on a point on the wall behind the television, willing her mind away as he thrusts hard and slow, again and again, and each one hurts so much she wonders if her body can stand it.

He nuzzles the shell of her ear with his stubble and pushes in deeper. The knot is larger than she could have imagined; big enough that she can barely move and even he has trouble rutting into her as he usually does. He grunts heavy against her hair and mutters that this is taking too long, and then he moves, and it’s forceful and horrible and she can’t even keep her feet on the floor and his fingers dig into her hips as he thrusts into her faster, small thrusts that never stop nor seem to accomplish anything but moving the knot within her and making her cry with pain.

He kisses her shoulders and back when the sobs break free, his teeth sharp against her skin. She cries out, yells at him, and she almost isn’t ashamed when she realizes what she’s saying. She just wishes begging him to stop would make him stop instead of driving him to fuck her harder. Nothing she says ever works. When he’s done, he bites her neck, marking her again, marking his victory over her. “Don’t want to spoil myself. We’ll only do that when you displease me.”

She sinks to the floor and cries, for once not caring that he’s there to see. He’s trying to break her, and she can’t stop crying, can’t hide the fissures in her facade that betray her and show her weakness.

He stoops in front of her and brushes her hair out of her face. It is a gentle gesture from a man who is not gentle. “Look at me.” She does, watching as he pulls off his full condom and tosses it in the trash. He watches her, studies the bruises that are darkening on her skin. He seems pleased, but she knows that will not last. “Bend over the bed.”

Her legs ache. All of her aches. She’s shaking enough that he has to help her up, shoves her over the bed himself, pushes her legs apart as she trembles with pain and exhaustion and hatred and fear. He shoves into her, and she hates herself for being relieved that it’s not the other hole, and he presses her hands into the hard mattress, pinning them there like she’s a dead specimen on a display board. “Beg me to stop again.”

She presses her lips together in defiance, and he nips hard at her shoulder.

“Beg me,” he orders. “Or I’ll fuck you in the ass again and _make_ you beg me.”

She shudders. “Please stop,” she whispers.

* * *

His room consists of a rock-hard bed with an aged headboard, a bedside table on either side, a dresser, a closet that he leaves locked, but where she suspects he keeps his weapons, and the television. There’s a potted plant in a stand by the window that she is expected to care for, but it needs sunlight, and she can’t help but wonder what he’ll do to her when it dies. She knows it’s dying - she picks dead leaves off of it each day in hopes he won’t see them - and she knows he knew it would die when he got it for her and said it was, “Their plant.”

There are times now when he doesn’t fuck her every moment of the day, and they lie on his bed and watch TV together. She remembers how much she would have fought him for having his arms around her, for touching her at all, but now she knows there are worse things. 

He grunts and removes his arm, and something feels wrong. Worse, this is different, and different doesn’t end very well for her. She hopes she doesn’t have to remind him that the most recent cast had only come off a short while ago - though how long, she can only guess. Rumlow doesn’t keep a calendar here. 

He bends over, his arm rummaging for something she can’t see, and when he rolls over again, he holds a key. “The closet. I’ve been stockpiling. Bring everything from the top two drawers and spread it out on the bed.”

She hesitates, debating how quickly she could search for weapons, and then sees him watching her as if he knows what she’s thinking.

She takes the keys, and he smirks. She moves to the closet, and for one fanciful second hopes there are clothes. The room is still rather warm, but it would be nice to have some clothes, to not feel as if she’s on display for him.

She opens the top drawer and stares, then opens the second.

“Hurry, beta.”

She gathers as much as she can in her arms and carries them to the bed. Most of them seem self-explanatory. Some have uses she can’t yet fathom. It takes her four trips to get them all and spread them out on the bed. 

He smirks at her. “Know what all of these are for?”

She shakes her head.

“That’s what I liked about you before, you know. When you were all lying to yourselves about freedom and shit. You weren’t a prude, you just didn’t get much chance to be a whore.” He moves behind her and rubs her arms. “And you’re my whore now, aren’t you.”

She doesn’t move. His hand moves to the sensitive skin at the apex of her thighs and pinches viciously. She cringes and nods.

“And why is that, beta?”

She swallows. “You’re my Alpha.”

“Right.” He smirks at her; she must look more hesitant, weaker, than she realizes. She squares her shoulders and meets his eye. He smirks again, and his hand traverses the skin of her back as he surveys the objects before him. He has no interest in her strength, only its destruction, and there is still a grin on his lips. “It’s okay, little beta. I’m bored, so I’m going to teach you how to use all these. Maybe you’ll even like it.” They both know that’s a lie, that he will never allow her to enjoy it and she never will even if he did. He smiles. “And I’m here to help you if you need it.”

He’s being nice. She doesn’t trust it. Doesn’t trust him.

He goes on to prove that he is unworthy of her trust. It’s a fresh new hell, and part of her is amazed that she had never considered how much worse he could be. But every time she thinks he’s reached his lowest point, he moves the bar still lower. He moves her, uses her, and mocks her for everything he makes her do. She wants it to stop but knows it will not.

Hours pass. His hips shift between hers. “I’m your Alpha. You’re my beta. This is where you want me, right?”

She wants him in a hole six feet under, but she nods because there’s no reason yet not to play along. Not playing along will only make things worse. She keeps her eyes on the ceiling.

He changes the angle and presses down with all his weight. The pain makes her gasp. She feels another tear slide toward her hairline. “ _Right?_ ”

She nods, hurried and desperate. She can’t say he’s right. Hopes she never will. She can only take so much pain. But he is part of Hydra, and Hydra revels in pain, believes it makes better fighters and better agents. He is not like Hydra; he never allows himself to be injured as he injures her, never seems to enjoy his injuries received in the service of Hydra’s glory, only hers.

She learns to hate those drawers, learns to hate the toys. She learns to prevent his boredom, and even as she tries to amuse him in little ways that disgust her, she wishes death on him.

* * *

He smiles at her as he takes her hands and pins them over her head. Her body is limpid; moving makes it all hurt all over again. His voice is a breath against her hairline. “This time, I want you not to fight me. I want you to beg me to fuck you. Want it. Want me.” He kisses her temple, licks against the tear trails on her face, bites her neck to mark another conquest. “Because if you don’t, I’ll make you beg me to fuck you in the ass, and I won’t stop until you’re bleeding on the floor. The doctors here can fix all sorts of things, beta.” She doesn’t doubt that; he has broken her before, and they have fixed her body time and time again while ignoring the rest of her. She wonders sometimes if they want her broken as badly as he does, or if they just wait. Maybe they have bets on how long it will take him to break her.

She swallows. “Why don’t you ever call me Sharon?”

He thrusts into her, deep and hard, and she wishes she hadn’t asked. “Your value isn’t in having a name, bitch. It’s in your lineage and your purpose. That’s it. Now beg.”

He’s hard and vicious. She has spoken too much, said the wrong thing.

And so, even though she starts to cry soon after, she begs. But like anything else she does, it does not make him stop, does not make it hurt less.

* * *

Time passes. He forces himself on her. He plays mind games with her. She knows he’s doing it but can’t stop looking for signs of what’s safe and what isn’t. He knows, deliberately acts one way for a week and then acts completely differently the next, laughs at how he plays with her as he fucks her. They both know he toys with her, but she never knows what will truly upset him and can’t stop watching for warning signs. Maybe it’s selfish, but she doesn’t want him to hurt her. She knows he will anyway, tells herself not to hope that she can stop it, reminds herself that she has no power here. But she can’t help the tendril of hope. That hope is all she has other than the pain he inflicts on her time and time again, and yet in some ways the hope is crueler because the pain never stops. _He_ never stops.

He tosses her a collar and a leash and pockets the key again. All this time, and she still doesn’t know what he keeps in the other drawers. He had mentioned that it was where he kept the toys for when she was bad, but she has seen no proof of such toys - how would she even know the difference between the good toys and the bad ones when they are both hell? - and hopes nonetheless that there are weapons there that she can one day use against him. “Put it on. We’re going for a walk.”

She puts the collar and leash on, but she doesn’t understand. The room is too tiny for a walk. She can clean the whole place pretty quickly now, especially now that she doesn’t have to worry about taking care of the plant - and yes, that had been bad. Nonetheless, she puts the collar on and hands him the leash handle, and he undoes the locks on the door. He steps outside and punches in the alarm code before she’s registered what he’s doing, and he ends up having to tug the leash to get her outside.

She stares at the hallway outside, the white walls and linoleum floor and headache-inducing lights. He tugs again, and she follows. Guards are stationed every - it’s been so long she has to hope she’s gauging it right - hundred feet, and she doesn’t realize she’s naked until she sees the way their eyes follow her. Margaret Carter’s niece, she thinks, laid bare before her enemies. She forces herself to keep her chin up. As if she would ever be ashamed of her own body. As if she’s weak. She isn’t. Not really.

They get into an elevator, and when they get out, there are far more people. But there are also people like her, naked and trailing after their Alphas on leashes. She doesn’t understand it, but not all of them are naked, though; some are dressed and even seem... happy.

Rogers, she sees, is not. Nor is his friend, who she knows from the news programs that Rumlow makes her watch is Bucky Barnes, former American hero and current Hydra hero. He walks with a limp, and it looks like someone took a chunk out of his leg; there is a pink, angry scar that looks new. They’re both naked, emaciated, and dirty, shadows under their eyes.

Rogers stares at her when he sees her, and suddenly she remembers all the scars from the beatings and bites and cuts Rumlow has inflicted on her. She lowers her eyes as Rumlow leads her to the small group of... what? Pets? Is she supposed to play with them like she’s a puppy now?

He doesn’t say. He locks her leash to a metal bar nearby, and she has the image of a cowboy tying up his horse outside a bar. She stares at the lock, at the leash, and she wonders if she can escape even when she knows she can’t, that he would only hurt her more than ever for the attempt when he got her alone again.

Rumlow leaves to talk to the Skull, and Rogers speaks so softly that she has to strain to hear. “Carter. You okay?”

She bites the inside of her cheek and weighs whether or not to answer. Rumlow hadn’t told her she couldn’t speak. “As fine and dandy as I can be, being raped every day.” Rogers looks away, but Barnes looks at her as if seeing her for the first time. “And it’s Sharon.”

Rogers doesn’t move. “I’m sorry.” His voice breaks. “I’m sorry I wasn’t faster stopping the carriers.”

“Don’t be an ass, captain.” She could swear that Barnes almost grins, but she offers no apologies. Rumlow doesn’t let her speak freely. She won’t apologize for indulging now that she has the opportunity to do so. “There’s only so much you could have done. The rest of us are on this planet, too, and you didn’t see us stopping things in time.” Besides, if she’d stopped Rumlow in the control room... Well. Rogers wasn’t right to blame himself. Maybe she wasn’t right to blame herself, either, but she wasn’t going to start taking her own advice now. She looks around with a frown. “I thought there would be more of us,” she says slowly. “Are the others still being conditioned?”

They hesitate. Barnes shakes his head. “We don’t know.” He seems better than before. The emptiness in his eyes is gone; his face is more expressive. She wonders how he did it, if Rogers helped him. She wonders how they still manage to be themselves when they’re treated as nothing.

She knows it’s a hopeless question, but she asks anyway. “The Avengers?”

“Most are dead or in captivity.” Barnes is blunt. At a time like this, she appreciates it. Rogers’ gaze falls to the floor and stays there. Once again, it seems that everyone he has known is dead but his best friend.

She looks them over, careful to keep her eyes at the chest or above. She has long ago accepted her nakedness, though she is not so pleased to be displayed before others. She imagines they are similar, or perhaps the Skull has allowed them out enough that they are accustomed to it. Still, her eyes do not travel beneath their chests. A sign of respect that too few Hydra agents would show. “You two okay?”

Barnes nods. Rogers shakes his head, his lips a thick line. She frowns at them. 

Barnes caves first. “I made him eat. He needed it. He was hungry. The drinks aren’t enough for him.”

“It was part of your leg,” Rogers snaps. There is revulsion in his voice.

Barnes is unaffected. “You needed it,” he repeats. He shrugs. “If you hadn’t been so hungry, you wouldn’t have eaten it.”

Rogers won’t meet her eyes anymore. His cheeks are red, his eyes are wet. He is haunted, and she understands. If this experience has taught her anything, it’s shame.

She interrupts the glaring contest between the two. “And the Skull found out and is punishing you, too?” It is a guess, but it has not been long since the Winter Soldier was still Hydra’s prize and darling.

Barnes nods.

Rumlow is making his good-byes to the group. The collar starts to itch, and she fights the urge to run.

“Don’t worry,” she tells them quietly. “I have a plan to get us out of here.”

She doesn’t have a plan. But the look of hope and gratitude Rogers flashes her makes her realize they need one.


	2. Chapter 2

Weeks pass. The walks are more frequent. She takes note of security protocols whenever she can, compares notes on them with Barnes whenever she gets the chance. Rogers has spoken back to the Skull and now isn’t allowed out of his room. She offers to try and smuggle food in to him, but Barnes just gives her a look and says flatly, “I take care of him. That’s my job.” She doesn’t bring it up again.

She talks to the others. She isn’t sure what they’re called by Hydra. Pets, losers, it doesn’t matter. They’re all easy to spot. All emaciated and tired. Most of them have no hope anymore, and it shows. She tries to spread the hope she’d given Rogers, talks with them about their Alphas, about anything else they may have noticed. Looks for weaknesses and patterns, anything she can use.

She isn’t prepared for Rumlow barging into their room, doesn’t defend herself as he throws her against a wall, can’t get her hands up in time. He’s found out, she thinks. He’s found out and now he’s going to kill her.

She had hated the thought of dying here before, but that was before she had people who were depending on her. She can’t fail them. She can’t die. She won’t.

“Three of them!” Rumlow snaps. His shoulders rise and fall with his breathing. He is livid, and she is going to die for it. “Three of them pregnant this week alone! WHY THE FUCK AREN’T YOU GETTING PREGNANT?”

She stares at him, but he’s on her again before she can say anything.

* * *

She comes to in the infirmary, the IUD on a tray beside her and the doctor telling Rumlow that no one had checked her medical files, no one had seen that she’d had it implanted before she’d joined SHIELD. She could speak, could tell them that it had been a precaution that had paid off, that it had kept her from bearing him children and was well worth every penny she’d paid and every punch she’d taken.

But she no longer has the IUD, and she understands better now. Too few people had been loyal to Hydra. Too many had been killed on their rise to power. They needed more people, needed to make sure they were loyal to Hydra. She remembers something like it happening in WWII, the “perfect” children taken from their homes for indoctrination, never to be seen by their families again.

That’s the Skull, she thinks. Old ideas for a new century.

Rumlow glares at her as the doctor speaks.

The medicine is wearing off. She’s starting to feel the pain now. 

Rumlow grabs her arm, half-drags her back to their room. She feels dizzy, feels like she might throw up. She can’t find her footing. She knows better than to think he’ll care.

“You never told me you got an IUD.”

“You never told me you were trying to get me pregnant.” Not that it would have changed anything.

“Why do you think I was fucking you so much?”

She shouldn’t say it. She knows she shouldn’t say it.

But Carters say what no one else will. Her value is in being a Carter. He’d said so himself.

“Because you’re a fucking prick, you dumbass fuck.”

The beating and interspersed fucking are bad enough that when she wakes in the infirmary days later, she’s told that Rumlow has been sent on a mission. She doesn’t even mind that bones are broken and everything hurts once more - Hydra doesn’t believe in easing pain, and as such there is no pain relief for anyone but Hydra’s leaders. But she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about any of it.

For once, she’s allowed to suffer in peace.

* * *

Rumlow treats her differently after he returns from his mission. He’s colder. He fucks her as if it’s a task and no longer laughs when she hurts, only makes self-satisfied sounds and tries to hurt her more.

The worst days are when he comes back muttering that people are calling him a fool.

She rides it out as best she can. She tells herself that she can’t just survive anymore, that she has to help others survive, and as such, her feelings are inconsequential.

She tells herself that for four months. Four months of seeing no one but Rumlow and that weaselly prick of a doctor. Four months of painful sex and painful beatings, four months of being told her value is only in her ability to bear him a child, that without it, she’s worthless. Not even her last name matters anymore, not if she doesn’t bear him children.

And after four months, the doctor confirms she’s pregnant.

* * *

He’s smart enough to know she’ll sabotage her pregnancy. She isn’t left alone, even with others like her. She feels like the Hydra Alphas are passing her around to be babysat. That is, essentially, what’s happening. The doctor prescribes her a diet that the Alphas make sure she sticks to, prescribes her exercises that the Alphas make sure she does. 

And yet, there are good moments. When she next sees Rogers and Barnes, Rogers looks faintly impressed, and Barnes tells her that she’d fooled Rumlow for so long that she’s a goddamn hero. Tells her everybody knows. 

It’s the closest she’s been to happy since before SHIELD fell.

There are bad moments, too. When the Skull places his hand on her growing belly and declares that the next generation of Hydra is coming along nicely, she has to be physically restrained. Rumlow glares at her, but the Skull chuckles and says that strength and loyalty to the young are a good trait for a mother to have, and that the child will be a testament to Hydra.

After _that,_ she has to be sedated.

* * *

But no. She’s wrong. The worst part is when she finally gives birth. Triplets. And it’s funny, because she’d known someone named Triplett once. She’d almost forgotten. She hopes he’s still alive.

A nurse takes the babies away while they’re still covered in blood and placenta, and they’re crying, and she screams for them to bring her babies back, that they need her and she needs them, that they’re _hers,_ but it’s the last time she sees her children.

* * *

She doesn’t care anymore. The fucking, the fighting. It doesn’t matter. Rumlow wants more kids. For Hydra’s glory or some crap. She would rather die. She wishes she could, wishes he would let her.

She doesn’t drink all of the liquid he brings her anymore. She can tell he’s concerned, maybe even worried. She doesn’t care. She isn’t hungry. She isn’t tired. She isn’t anything. 

The doctor tells Rumlow to take her on more walks, get her blood going. He takes her out multiple times a day sometimes, but she walks as if she’s in a fog. She can’t get her babies’ cries out of her head. She doesn’t want to be here anymore. She can’t keep doing this. None of it matters anymore. She doesn’t matter. 

One day someone touches her arm. The woman is clothed, but emaciated. Her hair is wild. And she can see it in the woman’s eyes that this woman understands what it’s like to lose her children because of this place.

It is a small gesture, but it is enough. She may never know the woman’s name, but she will never forget the woman’s eyes, the woman’s touch, and it is enough.

She pretends to be in a fog for two more days, enough time that Rumlow won’t think anything of the woman, and then she starts drinking all of the protein shakes again. He’s pleased enough that he orders more food for her, and the doctor agrees. Evidently, wherever her children are, Hydra wants more like them.

Another two weeks pass before she sets in motion some semblance of a plan. She still doesn’t have a real plan for escape, doesn’t know if she ever will, but she has a ghost of a plan and it’s better than nothing. “If you really want to get ahead in Hydra, you’re going to need my help,” she says.

He doesn’t believe her. She doesn’t expect him to. 

“We talk, you know. They trust me. Tell me things.” She takes a breath. “Tell the Skull that Klum has been skimming profits in the advertising division.” Klum doesn’t have any... pets. Whatever they’re called. No one to be homeless or raped by someone new if Klum disappears, no children to be destroyed because of disloyalty in the blood. “Tell him. He’ll have to promote you.”

The investigation takes three weeks. The promotion, complete with new living quarters, takes two.

* * *

He fucks her on every surface of their new apartment, against every patch of wall he can reach. She lets him. 

“Fight me like you used to,” he orders.

“Say please.”

He grunts. “Do it.”

“Fucking make me, you sad sack of shit.”

Arguing gets him off just as well.

* * *

She bides her time. Gathers information. It takes too long to gather too little information, but she bides her time nonetheless, waits and continues to gather what little she can. Rumlow is closer than ever to the Skull, in meetings with him all day, sitting at his table at dinner at night. Which means she is closer to Rogers and Barnes. The two of them soon learn not to mention her children. The first time they tell her they’re sorry for her loss, she falls back into a stupor that lasts for three days, days where she sobs uncontrollably and lies unseeing on the bed or on the floor, wherever Rumlow leaves her. It doesn’t seem to be something she can help, so she does her best to accept it and focus on what she _can_ help.

“That would be a mistake,” she says at dinner one night. Everyone at the table turns to look at her, and though she is as surprised as anyone that she has spoken, she doesn’t feel horrible about their attention being on her. The Skull doesn’t allow naked flesh on his dining room furniture, and Rumlow had given her a thin dress that at least hides much of her skin, though few of the scars.

“A mistake?” The Skull’s voice is slow, dangerous. Not even his advisors question him. Barnes kicks her under the table. After Rumlow’s kicks, Barnes’ bare foot does nothing.

She nods. Carters don’t back down, particularly to creatures like the Skull. And for the first time, she has a glimmer of a real plan. It may not help her now, may not help any of them, but it may lead to Hydra’s downfall and thus must be tried. “ Flint has _experience_ with enforcement, yes, but his real strength is investigation. He closes more cases than he reports.”

“And why would he do that?”

“Because he realizes that a zero-tolerance policy is more harmful to you than you do.”

The Skull watches her silently. He trails a finger along the lip of his wine glass. Red wine tonight. Red wine every night. Blood red has become Hydra’s color.

She stares back. They took her children from her. Hydra has been inside her, body and mind, and left wreckage in its wake. She is no longer afraid of pain, no longer afraid of a man with no face.

“You say he disobeys me for my own good.”

“Yes. Most people are one-time offenders. They get caught, it scares them enough they keep on the straight and narrow after. Flint makes them scared. He keeps the peace. You keep your laborers without worrying about replacing them. They’re expensive to replace, aren’t they?”

“Don’t tell me this Dreck has better ideas than my advisors,” the Skull murmurs.

Dreck. She’s a Dreck. She doesn’t look to Rumlow to see what it means, but she can see he’s pleased.

One day she’s going to wipe that look off his face.

“Rumlow. Bring your Dreck to the meetings tomorrow. If her idea on Flint proves useful, perhaps she’ll have others.” He pauses. “You were true to your word. You broke her better than Pierce did that Russian whore.” She keeps her face schooled as he turns to his other advisors. “I wish to speak with this Flint. Fetch him.”

Rumlow gives a salute on the way out the door. “Hail Hydra.”

She has never done the gesture herself, but there is a first for everything. Hydra has taught her that. The words leave a bitter taste in her mouth. Rogers looks confused, but Barnes seems to understand. Sometimes you have to cut off part of your leg so that people you care about can survive. Sometimes, you have to lose a part of your soul.

* * *

She is allowed at cabinet meetings. She is not allowed to speak unless spoken to directly. Whatever ideas she has, she is to tell Rumlow when they get back to their rooms so that he can suggest them later and take credit for them. The Skull doesn’t seem fooled, but the beatings become fewer and Rumlow isn’t as sadistic when he fucks her.

The anniversary of the rebirth of Hydra is in a little over a year’s time. She understands the reason for celebration. Hydra still has enemies, and Hydra wants to remind those enemies that it was thanks to SHIELD and its allies that Hydra survived, that Hydra can live out in the open just as well as it can fester in every shadow.

She doesn’t know whom the enemies are, but she knows she wants to meet them. She also wants to make sure Rogers and Barnes reach them, join them.

“You. Dreck.” The Skull looks to her. Everyone else follows suit. Rumlow’s eyes warn her to be careful. “The glory of the empire. The best way to celebrate. It must humiliate our enemies. It must glorify us. Speak.”

She looks to Rumlow. Thinks. Waits. She thinks she has something, but it isn’t something he would suggest. She looks to the Skull. “A ball. It must be large. Grand. Expensive. As if you haven’t a care in the world. Everyone who is anyone at Hydra must attend. And so too must their Dreck. It will show how grand you are, how powerful, how beneficent, how unworried you are by your enemies, and possibly the most important, how well your conditioning works.”

No one speaks. 

At length, the Skull nods. “A ball.”

She only hopes it is enough time to plan an escape.

* * *

Rumlow studies her with suspicion when he thinks she can’t see. She’s watched him for warning signs for so long that she doesn’t miss it. She tries to determine the reason. She’s been perfect lately. Drinking the Kool-Aid. Then she realizes that he’s suspicious _because_ she’s been too perfect.

It’s the most paradoxical fucking thing.

It presents her with a challenge. How to disobey without being punished. She can’t afford to be locked away right now. Not until after the ball. She has offered to help write to Hydra officials, inviting them to the ball on behalf of the Skull. It puts her in a position to know their names and locations. It puts her in a position to get them all in one place. If there are enemies, they will have to know of such a gathering. They will have to come. Hydra’s leaders gathered in one place will be too tempting, no matter how much security Hydra has in place. And the rebels can help free the Dreck and will be happy to take in Rogers and Barnes. She cannot count on them coming, cannot count on them making it through Hydra’s security, but she can hope, and for the first time in years she feels as if this hope may be real and not just wishful thinking.

She waits a couple days again - when she has a lifetime sentence, all she’s got is time, really - before rolling over before they fall asleep. There are no locks on the doors here - the Skull finds them unsightly - though due to Rumlow’s suspicion or his preference, her hands are still bound behind her back at night. It means she can only kiss the corner of his mouth. The kiss is soft, almost intimate, and it occurs to her that they have never had a loving kiss.

He seems to realize it, too. She’s never seen such incredulity on his face.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says slowly.

His face falls, doubtless thinking of all the old movies that had said such words were never good. She’s heard they don’t make movies anymore unless they celebrate the glory of Hydra. She’s never seen any of them, but she’s sure they’re all shit.

She keeps going. “I understand I wasn’t conditioned when I last got pregnant. But I understand better now. That I have to keep you happy. That I have to keep Herr Schmidt happy. I’ve been trying to be good.” She hesitates and looks away as if afraid of asking too much. “Do you think if I’m good enough, Herr Schmidt will let me keep the next child we have? Or several. The doctor said that I can still bear multiples.” The weaselly little prick. If they ever leave her hands untied during an examination, she’s going to stab him with every surgical tool in the room, leave them sticking out of his flesh like he’s a porcupine.

He wraps an arm around her. “I’ll talk to him.”

They both know he won’t, but he doesn’t realize that she knows. “Thank you.” She presses her lips to his again, and he responds in kind. The fucking afterward isn’t as gentle as the kiss, but she’d given up on such things from him. Nonetheless, she pretends to like it when he knots inside her, begging him to do it a second and third time until he’s too tired to oblige.

* * *

There are times when Rumlow is almost kind. He gets her new dresses to wear to the cabinet meetings, buys her soap that smells sweet and soft. Tries from time to time to get her off when he fucks her.

She knows better than to think it’s real. Whenever she has doubts, she remembers Peggy. And then she tries to forget Peggy, because she would never want Peggy to think of her as she is now. She tells herself of Noor Inayat Khan instead, until she remembers that Khan did not survive WWII. But she repeats the story of Khan’s life in her mind nonetheless, of how she refused to break under torture and found strength to help others escape, and adds to it the tales of Nancy Wake and Violette Szabo.

* * *

She gets pregnant two months later. She wishes it were otherwise, but she pastes on a smile and keeps up the charade. She lets the Skull touch her stomach, asks him for suggestions on baby names. Appeals to his ego. 

She doesn’t get to keep this baby, either.

* * *

Her value increases. Rumlow buys her more dresses in the Skull’s favored 1910s style, thick dresses with layers that keep her warm even in the drafty halls. She is allowed clips for her hair. The Skull gifts his cabinet with favors, and twice he gives her expensive trinkets that she’s sure have been stolen from Hydra’s victims. She accepts it all with humility and a smile and plays her part. To Hydra, she is good breeding stock, and if they keep finding her ideas useful, they may keep her around even after she’s no longer able to bear children.

She has no intention of staying long enough to find out. 

The ball is in April. She hears word that the night outside is cold, but she has had four children taken from her now, and the thought that anything else could feel cold is absurd. 

The Skull had explained that Dreck meant “filth” or “dirt” in German, and she had laughed as if it were a witty insight and as if Barnes and Rogers hadn’t already told her that. Her suggestion for the ball had been to make subtle fun of the word, and have all the Dreck wear dark clothes in contrast to Hydra’s bright and colorful ones. To show that Hydra lights the way, that they guide others to the light even if those few are unwilling at first.

The Skull is no fan of propaganda, but he has seen its value and is not a fool.

Rumlow carries her hand as he guides her into the room, and she has to marvel at the change in their fortunes over the past years. Rumlow, one of the Skull’s top enforcers to one of his top advisors. Despite how her rank, too, has risen, and she is treated almost as an equal now, she had told the Skull and Rumlow that she wanted to show Hydra’s enemies that she, too, had been a Dreck. Like them, she would wear dark clothes, and in homage to the Skull, her Edwardian-style dress is a dark, blood red overlaid by black lace.

It does not seem to occur to them that dark clothes will be harder to see at night, that all of the Dreck are dressed for escape. Rumlow has already told her that when they are alone, he’s going to fuck her until the gown is in pieces. He’d already fucked her after seeing her try it on, and she had pulled against his knot and grunted with pain like he wanted and begged him to fuck her harder and begged the universe not to let her get pregnant again.

There are times when she wonders if he’s honestly bought into the charade that he has broken her, that she loves him and what he does to her, wonders if he might be falling for her. Wonders if it will make manipulating him easier or if she will abuse the notion too readily and damn them all. She cannot afford to let them all down. She tells herself she cannot be sure of his love and tries all the harder to please him. It is a good cover even if it leaves her feeling disgusted by herself.

They go straight to the Skull and give him their greetings, and then they separate to greet the other guests. No one seems to notice, when Rogers and Barnes are secure that the guards in the security station are drugged, that the Dreck are slowly leaving one by one, never too close together. Some who haven’t earned Hydra’s trust are regarded with suspicion when they make weak excuses for leaving, but she tries to be there to vouch for them, or Rogers or Barnes steps in. The three of them have been successfully broken by their Hydra betters, or so they have let Hydra think, and they are believed when there is a caged room with food for the Dreck with no chance of escape. Herr Schmidt had wanted Hydra to celebrate in peace and ease without having to worry about the Dreck stifling the festivities.

Another hour passes, then another.

A man steps into her path. She has never met him, but she knows him nonetheless. “Detective Flint.” She inclines her head. “How do you do?” The Skull favors a more antiquated way of speaking. Tonight is not the night to forget that.

“I found out I got my promotion because of you.” He reeks, and it takes her too long to realize why. Cigarette smoke and whiskey. She has nearly forgotten them, and though she had never been fond of them before, now she finds herself yearning for them, yearning for an indulgent freedom she can’t have. “Why’d you promote me, lady?”

She smiles a thin smile and moves closer. She does not mind his suspicions, but she minds that he is voicing his suspicions here and now. “Honestly? Because you are an incompetent nitwit who can’t close a case without asking for help, and I needed you in a higher position. I needed someone who wouldn’t look too closely to what was underneath his nose. I needed someone who was also good enough and smart enough to know better than to raise an alarm when something went wrong. Someone who would swim with the tide because it was easier that way, and would only change course when he had to, likely to save his own skin.” She moves even closer. “There is an escape through the cellar prisons.” The work of months upon months, of uncertain treaties and idealistic fools. “Too many have escaped by now for the Skull to allow you to live if he finds you have failed. If you are wise, Detective Flint, you will go with them.”

He stares at her. She stares back.

He slowly bobs his hat to her with white fingers and goes. He had never wanted the Skull’s attention in the first place. He certainly doesn’t want it now. She knows what fear can make a person do.

She continues on. Three hours pass. Three and a half. Dawn cannot be far off. She, Rogers, and Barnes are nearly the last Dreck in the room. She is the only woman on the Skull’s council; when it comes time for him to dance, when he can no longer put it off, he holds his hand out to her. She takes it with a smile. She talks of his glory. He talks of the future of Hydra. They wish each other well, and he hands her off to Rumlow, whose grip is too tight and eyes are too dark. He spins her into the crowd, away from the Skull.

“You’re up to something.”

“Only if you would have me be up to something.” She kisses the corner of his lips; he turns his head. 

“Where are the fucking Dreck, beta?”

She feels sick in her stomach. He hasn’t called her that in months. He only calls her that when he’s upset, and when he’s upset, bad things happen. It can’t happen tonight. Not tonight. Not before Rogers and Barnes have escaped. They haven’t left yet, waiting for something she doesn’t know about. She can’t let Rumlow raise the alarm before they’re gone. “I don’t know, Rumlow. You’re my Alpha. I have to tell you if I know. I don’t know how not to. You have to believe me. I haven’t-”

Someone is retching at the punch bowl. No, two someones. Rumlow’s nails dig into her flesh. She feels the ghosts of broken bones return to haunt her. 

“What did you do?” he hisses.

She shakes her head, eyes wide. Five more have fallen. She thinks at first that it’s poison, but there’s no punch in their hands and yet their eyes are bulging and blood is dripping from their noses. She didn’t do this. She hadn’t done this. This isn’t the plan. The rebels. It must be the rebels. They have gotten through security, and now they are here to help them, help the Dreck, help Rogers and Barnes.

He pulls her to a hallway, away from the direction in which others are leaving in a calm and orderly file, the Skullleading the way. Hydra doesn’t panic, after all. From its leader to the lowest of the underlings, they die with quiet dignity and kill with careless disregard.

Rumlow’s steps are strong and sure and she is afraid and yet doesn’t know why she is afraid. She has helped the Dreck escape. She has no children here left to protect. She has no reason to live.

He slams her against a wall. Her cry echoes in the empty hall. She can’t understand why they’re still here, why they aren’t leaving. She doesn’t know what’s killing people in the next room over. She knows it’s the rebels, hopes it’s the rebels, and yet does not know where the rebels are. “What. The fuck. Did you _do?_ ”

And then she understands. She isn’t afraid of dying. She isn’t afraid of pain. She’s afraid because she knows she has to fight him, but she can’t. The thought of what will happen when she inevitably loses, how much it will hurt, makes her want to cry. She can undermine an empire with words but she can’t punch the man who tells her she has no value.

She gasps for breath. She shakes her head. If she can’t punch him, words will have to do. “I didn’t. I didn’t. You have to believe me. I would never. He’s going to be so angry, Rumlow. The longer we’re away from him, the worse it will look. You can torture me later if you like, fuck me until there’s nothing left, I don’t fucking care, but this wasn’t me. It wasn’t.”

He takes her hands, crushes them against the wall above her. “I don’t know if you’ve been deceiving me, beta, but I will break you, again and again, remake you time and time again until you are the perfect, mindless whore you were meant to be. Your value is in bearing children for Hydra, beta. You can break and pop them out at the same time.”

Something in her snaps. He’s wrong. He’s so wrong. He’s always been wrong. “There’s value,” she says in an echo of what he had told her so long before, “in my last name.” And with that, she fights him, fights him as hard as she had years before. She has value. Regardless of her last name. Regardless of how many children she has or how many are taken away. She has value because she is a person, and she is alive, and she _is,_ and that’s what gives her value.

She has more value than she has strength in her kicks. He laughs at her, at what to him must seem like feeble attempts. To her they are gargantuan, and she knows that if she stops she will never start again. He laughs harder as she thrashes against him, and when he bows his head to bite her neck, she bites the top of his ear and rips with her teeth.

She has never heard anything more satisfying than his scream. 

He fights her back now, throws punches that she knocks away with rusty blocks, a fist that hits her cheek, another that grabs her hair and slams her head against the wall. She fights on, because to die fighting him is better than dying without fighting him, and part of her is outraged, part is afraid, when he’s suddenly gone and she falls to the ground gasping for breath and blinded by tears. 

Rogers helps her to her feet while Barnes punches Rumlow, who has more trouble with a metal arm than a woman’s face. Rumlow is soon on the floor. Barnes doesn’t stop, punching again and again until the arm breaks through skin, then bone, until Rumlow’s head is a bowl of blood and brain matter. She’s crying and doesn’t know why, can’t stop, and Rogers ties a piece of fabric over her nose and mouth similar to the ones he and Barnes wear.

“Poison gas. We have to go.” He takes her hand, and it’s gentle and firm and warm. Barnes runs behind them. She goes blindly, tears obscuring her vision. She thinks they need an emergency pack, and then realizes she hasn’t seen such a thing in what might be a decade. She knows they backtrack several times. There’s fighting. Hydra, the rebels. They fight everyone. Hydra thinks the Dreck are loyal to the rebels, the rebels think they are loyal to Hydra. They don’t care that Rogers and Barnes are - used to be - heroes. They don’t care. It doesn’t matter to them. She can barely wrap her mind around how badly her hopes have betrayed her. She throws a couple half-hearted punches, and she keeps wondering how many times she’ll think she’s going to die in this place before she truly does.

At some point, Rogers asks her to trust them. She has the sense to look him in the eye. “I don’t have anybody else to trust.” And he nods and takes her hand and they run again.

* * *

They run for what feels like years. The world outside is unfamiliar and overtaken by nature, the population of a couple states spread out over a continent. Soon, there are still fewer people. With so many leaders of Hydra slain, the underlings are picked off, and the three still can’t stop running. Hydra had killed hundreds of millions of people. Those who didn’t agree with them, those who didn’t obey them, then those who were deemed useless. In the backlash, anyone who had aligned themselves with Hydra is killed. People are angry; talking to Hydra is enough a sign of guilt, enough justification for death.

She has no idea how old her children are, hopes that maybe there is some record and she can hold them one day, but then they hear of conditioning camps that are burned or gassed or both, of the bodies of children that are found. Even with the corpses of children, the thirst for revenge is not sated. The seeds of Hydra cannot be allowed to take root, no matter how old. Everyone in the camps are slain. She falls back into a stupor, barely eating or drinking for weeks, perhaps a month, crying for hours on end or just staring with empty eyes. Rogers and Barnes keep her alive, goading her into eating and drinking, carrying her when she can’t walk. The catatonia is a dangerous comfort, but eventually, somehow, cruelly, she fights her way to the surface again.

The first thing she sees is a headline proclaiming that home prices are at an all-time low.

Steve and Bucky - they are Steve and Bucky now that they’re free, and they insist on calling her Sharon - are inseparable, and they will not leave her alone. Sharon can’t bring herself to leave them, either. They take care of her when the fog of grief overtakes her, yes, but it’s more than that. They know how it feels to be used, to think themselves hideous because of the actions of others. 

They take shelter in abandoned buildings. There are plenty these days. They avoid almost all other people. Even if they could trust others as Hydra or rebel, they do not feel comfortable around other people anymore. Sometimes, one of them will feel like catching up on the news, try to find if the other Dreck survived, but they can only take so much news of revenge and death. Optimism is a distant memory. Hope and faith are words that leave them staring at walls for hours.

There are days when one of them will do nothing but cry, and the other two will crowd in close, keeping their hands carefully to themselves. They each have nightmares. Sharon wakes screaming for her children or crying out for Rumlow to stop. Bucky wakes screaming wordlessly in pain and fear. Steve wakes with strangled sobs and stares at Bucky, at Bucky’s scarred leg, or wakes with a gasp and stares at the ceiling, his breath rasping in the darkness. 

The process of healing, if it can be called healing, is slow. Meals must be made. Beds must be made. Steve uses his strength to fix their temporary homes and prepare their firewood. Bucky experiments with recipes he finds in the kitchen. Sometimes, Sharon cleans the same room over and over before one of them stops her. She can’t stop making sure the bed is made whenever they’re not in it. Steve and Bucky play cards with her until she falls asleep. It becomes a mark of pride to leave the bed unmade, and some days she succeeds in crawling between the sheets without ever having fixed the bed. She never manages to go two days in a row.

Steve and Bucky are still Alphas. When one goes into heat, the other is fast behind. They can’t help their nature, she knows. They can’t help what they are. And when she can’t bear to go near the bed because of it, the two go outside. It takes three phases for her to tell them they can stay inside, but it takes another four before she can stand to be around them when they’re in heat. Another two cycles, and she tries to help more, leaving food and drink ready in a cooler for them for when they’re done. She still feels unsafe when they’re in heat, keeps wondering if they might lose control around her. Logically, she knows they try to control themselves, but whenever the heat hits them, she feels Rumlow’s hands on her again. Rumlow had never gone in heat, but he’d fucked her so much he’d never needed to. 

They don’t push. They understand. They get better at predicting when it might happen and telling her ahead of time. They tell her where they’ll be and when they’ll be back so she doesn’t worry if they are not at home, and they are never late and often bring food back, or little trinkets that they make because they all still remember the Skull’s gifts, and they never want to show each other they care with an expensive gift. Instead, the gifts are small things; her favorite is the bouquet of pine needles they bring her when they can’t find any flowers. It’s a stupid thing, a cheap and ugly thing, and she loves it.

They put a lock on the door and give her the key. She knows the lock won’t work against a super soldier and the Winter Soldier, but it is a nice gesture. She doesn’t use the lock. They don’t give her reason to. 

They talk. About their childhoods, their heroes, anything but Hydra. But they don’t have to talk. Days can pass in silence, hours can pass in animated conversation. Bucky teaches her inappropriate war songs from the 40s, she teaches him Chumbawamba. Steve asks if he can teach them both to shut up. She knows he’s joking, as does Bucky, and she starts teaching them Queen songs.

They are important to her. They are no longer just allies. They are more than that. They are the ones who have born witness to her weaknesses, to her mind falling apart, and have not run away. She tells them to stop putting locks on doors. She sleeps on the couch and gives them the bed the three of them share because none of them dare sleep alone, crawling in after they have finished and cleaned up, and they always clean up after, even putting fresh sheets on the bed, because they don’t want her to sleep alone in a strange room. 

Sometimes she thinks they would let her join them. She knows she’ll ever be ready for that, dreads the mere thought of a man’s hands on her ever again.

Steve and Bucky sleep tight against each other, and as time passes, the three fall into the habit of sleeping with Sharon’s fingers lightly resting against Bucky or Steve’s hand. It is the most contact she can handle, but it is a comfort to know they are there, to know they will feel her absence if Hydra or rebels wrench her away in the night.

None of them can bear to live in the same place for long anymore. They’ve had too many years spent seeing the same four walls. They move frequently, always together, and Bucky discovers that he likes collecting things. He likes _having_ things. Steve points out that he’ll have to leave it behind when they move - they still avoid people and thus tend to walk along abandoned roads and overgrown wilderness, walking for miles and carrying little - Bucky shrugs and says he’ll just collect new stuff at the new place. Much of his collections are things that mean nothing to anyone but him, and thus Steve and Sharon. Pine cones, rocks of a certain color, seashells from that time they tried to live on the beach, leaves that aren’t dried and dead yet. It keeps him busy. Eventually Steve tries to take up art again but finds he prefers knitting, prefers to keep images out of his head if he can help it. That winter the three of them have so many scarves, caps, gloves, and sweaters that they have to leave some of them behind. Sharon loses herself in solitaire and wonders if that counts as a hobby. 

As time passes, she starts going out of sight behind bushes or around a wall and tries to throw punches with her old strength. Bucky finds her, falls into step beside her, and she watches him to relearn what she’s forgotten. Steve joins them soon after. It becomes part of their daily routine.

Steve and Bucky are the ones who hold her close when she can’t stop crying, who help her find clothes that cover Rumlow’s slow-fading scars on her skin. She knows there are others who understand, like the other woman whose name she’ll never know who also lost her children, but Steve and Bucky understand that she is no less valuable because she is broken, and she understands the same of them. She tells herself that the world still has value even though it, too, is broken, but that is harder for her to believe.

For now, she focuses on what she can control, and she takes defiant pleasure in calling herself Sharon Carter again. She is no longer the same Sharon Carter as before, the one who placed too much value in a last name. The Sharon Carter of today knows what she can survive.


End file.
